Heavy in Your Arms
by vernajast
Summary: The village is being turned upside down to find Uchiha Sasuke, and Naruto is overdue from a mission. Little do they know that both are hiding in plain sight. SasuNaru. Warnings for angst, death, love, heartbreak.
1. A Heavy Heart to Carry

_**A/N: **__Yaoi415 gave me this idea. Thanks for letting me borrow it, love! Fuyu_no_akegata reviewed it for me and contributed a lot to the overall flow, as well as encouraged me to finish. Lyrics are from "Heavy in Your Arms" by Florence + the Machine, which she suggested after reading the first chapter. _**_SasuNaru, roughly age 18._**

_**Warnings:**__ angst, death, love, smut, heartbreak._

_This is already complete; there are four chapters. Expect daily updates through Sunday._

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**Heavy in Your Arms  
part 1  
by vernajast**

_sasuke x naruto x sasuke_

_**(I was a heavy heart to carry; my beloved was weighed down.  
My arms around his neck. My fingers laced a crown.  
I was a heavy heart to carry; my feet dragged across the ground,  
And he took me to the river where he slowly let me drown.)**_

"Sasuke..."

With the curtains drawn, Naruto's one-room apartment seems bigger.

"Wake up..."

His voice echoes softly against the blank walls. He barely recognizes it as his own.

Outside, the village itself has fallen into a sort of silent vigil broken only by the bay and snarl of the Inuzukas' dogs on the hunt and the tap-tap-tap of shinobi feet across the rooftops.

Naruto is barely aware of the disturbance outside.

At some point, Hatake Kakashi stops once to peer into his student's darkened apartment, but it is still and empty. It appears unlived-in, and for that, he is truly grateful. _Naruto doesn't need to be here for this._

He hopes the boy will forgive them later, aware that he is really only stacking one false hope onto the back of another, but it can't be helped. This is a learned survival skill.

"Anything?" Anko lands lightly beside the worn-looking Hatake, who shakes his head once and disappears. The kunoichi's fists clench at her sides. "Damn. Uchiha...when I get my hands on that little jerk..." She growls through the last syllable, grudgingly shifting focus onto the mission directives and not what she plans to do when they apprehend the target.

She presses the mic positioned just below her jaw and mutters, "Tsume, Kiba, do another sweep," before backtracking to meet-up with her team. As far as she can tell, the tiny apartment is just another dead end.

Inside, Naruto shifts slightly, painfully aware of the awkward position they are lying in. "Wake up..."

An arc of blue chakra flares from his fingertips, and he smiles weakly at the way the light illuminates Sasuke's genteel features as it's absorbed into his body. "Heh...you can't sleep all day...da...tte..."

Despite his words, Naruto twists in Sasuke's arms and buries his face into his teammate's shoulder. "Okay, fine..." He coughs and draws in a sluggish breath. "Maybe just a little longer..."

Across the village, Shizune stands before the hokage, holding a clipboard and gnawing anxiously on the pencil she's clutching tightly. Tsunade is pacing back and forth behind her desk. Her narrowed eyes occasionally dart toward the window. When she pauses and levels that hawk-sharp gaze at Shizune, her protege tries to answer the unasked question brewing there: "Tsunade-sama, they're trying. It's just that—"

The younger woman jumps back with an embarrassing squeak as the hokage slams her fist against the desk. The wood groans, and a slow, yawning crack stutters across the surface. She raises her eyes to meet Shizune's, and Shizune is sure that she has only ever seen that look once before...when Jiraiya...when he...

"He's here. They aren't trying hard enough." Tsunade's voice is low and cool and too, too calm now. "Where is Naruto?"

"He... he hasn't returned from his mission." Shizune swallows and curses Jiraiya for not being here for them now. "Naruto-kun is nearly two weeks late."

Tsunade turns away from her student to face the broad window behind her desk. The entire village spreads out before her, and it is _hers_ to protect. _At all cost_.

"Find him."

Ironically, Naruto is already home. He arrived one hour early, in fact, and he is currently resting. It is only his mission report that is two weeks overdue.

He whispers to the dark shadow beside him: "I missed you..." He's no longer sure if he's even saying the words out loud or just going through the motions. Phantom lips pantomime the shapes, but nothing passes through them. Sasuke's name perches on the tip of his tongue, a mantra to be repeated, a hope and a wish and a curse and a fear so deeply embedded in his soul that Naruto can no longer tell the difference.

"Don't ever leave me again..." His breath stutters. He brushes thin fingers through Sasuke's hair (his hand doesn't move), and then he tries to smile again (his mouth has forgotten how to make the shape of a smile, but there's no one there to tell him, like no one ever told him to give up, that some dreams aren't attainable, and that it is okay to admit defeat, like no one was ever there to tell him about love or family, so he never recognized either one until it was nearly too late...and then, it was gone).

"Sasuke..." The room is silent, cold, and if he could move, Naruto would pull a blanket over them, but he is just so... tired. Instead, he sighs softly into Sasuke's neck and presses his nose to the last Uchiha's slender jaw. "... lazy bastard..."

The faint red glow of demonic chakra rises and falls just beneath the surface of Naruto's skin, and his body greedily accepts the transfusion. It is a gift from the kyuubi that wreaks of self-preservation and (perhaps) begrudging sympathy (because it sees what is happening and knows that it is only a matter of time.)

_[[TBC]]_


	2. Is it Worth the Wait?

_**Warnings:**__ angst, death, love, smut, heartbreak._

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**Heavy in Your Arms  
part 2  
by vernajast**

_sasuke x naruto x sasuke_

_**(And is it worth the wait, all this killing time?  
Are you strong enough to stand,  
Protecting both your heart and mine?)**_

It's two days later when Kiba and Shino happen to pass by Naruto's apartment. They stop, back up, and exchange wary glances before Kiba reaches to rap his knuckles on the peeling window sill. Akamaru is a whining, fretting ball of nerves, and the kikaichū dance and tremble along the fibers of Shino's chakra.

The stench seeping beneath the window sill is heavy and rank. It steals into Kiba's sensitive nostrils, and when he can't take it any longer, the Inuzuka stumbles off the rooftop to empty his stomach onto the grass below.

Shino just stands there feeling useless. He can't convince the kikaichū to investigate; instead, they burrow beneath his skin in retreat.

Inside the apartment, time passes and stands still and freezes in place the way both boys' arms have.

It could have gone on like this forever—the broken thump of Naruto's heart, his raspy breath, and the increasingly infrequent charges of demonic chakra—but it doesn't.

It won't.

It never would have.

(so... no one told him some dreams aren't attainable)

The crash of glass and heavy feet on bare wood floor shatters the pristine stillness of (their sanctuary) the apartment. Naruto's eyes open slowly, unaware that he is even capable of the motion until his mind is filled with the vision of a million masked (ghosts standing shoulder-to-shoulder around the bed) ANBU. His eyes close again, almost as if he were blinking, not waking, and he clings tightly to the hope that it was just another illusion, a hallucination. There is no one there—no ugly artificial gazes, terrifying specters with bone-white nightmare faces, delusions he thought he had banished when he was a child, when he realized that there was no one coming to rescue him from the boogie man, the shadows at the corner of his eye, or the terrors that filled his dreams. When Sasuke left the village, he was alone again, and he had learned to face those fears. Alone. (because no one ever banished the monsters or told him it was okay to admit defeat, to give up, to...)

"Is that..."

"Oh, fuck..."

Naruto tightens his grip on Sasuke's waist like he tightens his grip on his hope. He ignores the dig of bare ribs into his forearm.

"The...smell...is..."

"Remove him."

Naruto whispers into Sasuke's chest: "No... don't leave me again... you jerk..." Ghostly hands yank and twist, trying to pry him away from Sasuke, but the quiet Uchiha holds onto Naruto just as tightly.

The blond idiot smiles (without smiling) when Sasuke whispers (silently), _'Tch. You're just as weak as ever.'_

"N-nuh-uh... teme...!" Naruto will punch that bastard's lights out. He'll show Sasuke. He'll—

_'Prove it, usuratonkachi.'_

Red chakra oozes and seeps from Naruto's pores, spills over the edges of the bed, across the floor, and alabaster demons scatter in a hundred directions.

"He's mine!" it screams, flowing out across the village, a tidal wave of indignant determination, a bloody promise of destruction. "I b-brought him back... I brought him... home..."

In a quiet, tumbledown corner of the Hidden Leaf Village, the Fifth Hokage sits bolt upright in bed. She is nose-to-nose with a blank white mask and drowning in the heat of the Kyuubi's once-familiar chakra.

"Oh, no..."

_[[TBC]]_


	3. My Love's an Iron Ball

_**Warnings:**__ angst, death, love, smut, heartbreak.__ There aren't space breaks missing here; it's supposed to shift from scene to scene. Thanks for reading._

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**Heavy in Your Arms  
part 3  
by vernajast**

_sasuke x naruto x sasuke_

_**(My love has concrete feet; my love's an iron ball  
Wrapped around your ankles, over the waterfall.  
I'm so heavy. Heavy in your arms.)**_

(so... no one told him some dreams aren't attainable)

_Red chakra bubbles and foams around Naruto's prone body as the boy struggles to rise and find support on unstable feet. __Surrounded by the sheer cliffs of the Valley of the End, he_ can feel the intimate scrutiny of Sasuke's sharingan eyes as they slide over his skin. 

_The Uchiha can't believe what he is seeing. It is incomprehensible, impossible; it explains everything. "What the hell are you!"_

_"A FRIEND!" Naruto grits his teeth and takes one teetering step forward before growling and launching himself toward Sasuke. "That's why I'll keep...fighting! That's why I won't give you up to Orochimaru! Even if I have to break your arms and legs, I'm going to stop you." His fist narrowly misses Sasuke's jaw, but his foot connects with his rival's lean stomach, and both boys crash into the towering wall of the canyon. _

_Embedded together in stone, the distance between them grows exponentially. _

_"WAKE UP, SASUKE!"_

_Sasuke's eyes are dark, hollow, empty, and when he drops his head and laughs, the sound dies flatly against the rocks. "No...__you__ wake up." _

_The valley slips to the side, tilts, and rough stone transcends into a soft blue comforter. Naruto finds himself looking down into Sasuke's face, cheeks heated by huffing breaths, his body clasped tightly against the other's chest. There is nothing proud in the Uchiha eyes staring up at him. Sasuke's fingernails dig into his back and Naruto believes that this might be the first time he has ever truly __seen__ him. _

_This is Sasuke; walls down, unguarded. _

_"Naruto..."_

_He turns his head away to hide the effect of his name whispered roughly in Sasuke's rich, sensual voice. His eyes shut tight against the way it twists inside him. Everywhere he touches, the slick-cool threads of Sasuke's darker chakra seep in through his pores, and Naruto is slowly being driven mad by the frenzied motion of pale hips rising up to meet his own. _

_"Sasuke...I...y-you're..." The words disappear faster than Naruto can produce them and are met with a single raised brow and Sasuke's lips taking away his breath and his thoughts and filling his head with white-hot light and..._

_...cold stone that scratches his fingertips as he walks through the dark, torch-lit corridor of the prison. _

_Konoha's worst criminals are kept here, buried beneath the ground, locked away in chakra-bare cells miles away from the village. No one visits. No one comes out. For most, the door only swings one way. _

_Only the Hokage himself seems to have a pass to come and go as he pleases, and no one dares to question it. _

_He drags his fingers along the wall as he walks, acutely aware of the closing distance between himself and the most dangerous man alive. When the bars of his cell become visible at the far end of the hall, Naruto's hand drops to his side, and he reins in his thoughts, steeling himself for the coming emotional storm. _

_"Sasuke?" He stands at arm's length from the bars, admittedly closer than he should. (but since when has logic or reason played a part in this?) "Hey, I brought the book you asked for yesterday." He leaves it safely in his pocket for now; it is his only bargaining chip, his only weapon against the constant push-pull of Sasuke's moods. "You there?"_

_Inside the cell, Naruto can hear shuffling, the grating of chains against the stone floor, and the soft rustle of fabric. _

_He isn't completely caught off guard when his body jolts forward to crash against the cell bars. Sasuke is right in front of him, and to say it is unexpected would only perpetuate the lie that he tells himself each day. They meet as violently as ever: lips and teeth and kisses through cold steel bars, the soft groans of powerful men desperately abandoning pretense and dignity for some measure of relief from the weight they are forced to bear. _

_Sasuke drops to his knees inside of the cell, and Naruto whimpers only once for the loss of contact. Pale hands slide over his body, unfastening his pants, and he stifles a moan. Sasuke's thumb digs into the sharp bone of Naruto's hip, and he tugs him closer again until the Hokage's body is pressed against the bars and he is buried deep inside of Sasuke's mouth. _

_Naruto's fingers grasp tightly to the bars and it takes every shred of self-control not to betray them both with the sounds he can barely contain. Time means nothing. When it's Sasuke, nothing else matters. Nothing. And if he had only accepted this long ago, perhaps things would have been different. _

_Though at that moment, he can't imagine wanting anything other than this: Sasuke's lips and hands and his warm breath ghosting across his stomach, the burst of heat behind his eyes as he comes, and the smirk that never fails to slip onto Sasuke's face as he licks his lips afterward. _

_"You're late..." he mutters in the darkness of his cell, rising to stand face-to-face with Naruto, who immediately pulls him into another violent flurry of kisses and grasping hands and misplaced hopes. (because for Naruto, really, he can't regret anything except for one thing. only one thing: that this dream will never come true.)_

"Sasuke!" (nothing) Red chakra fades as quickly as it flared.

The ANBU squad leader in charge watches the scene unfold with as much detachment as possible (not enough). Mismatched eyes harden against any betrayal of his own thoughts as the boys are forcibly separated. He swallows thickly at the crack of brittle bone as they are pried apart.

"Take care of the body."

It means nothing.

A single word brushes faintly against Naruto's heart—ice cold, clawing deep, too close to the truth: _'Weak.'_

(Sasuke...)

His arms grasp at nothing.

_[[TBC]]_


	4. This Will be My Last Confession

_**Warnings:**__ angst, death, love, smut, heartbreak._

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**Heavy in Your Arms  
part 4  
by vernajast**

_sasuke x naruto x sasuke_

_**(This will be my last confession:  
"I love you" never felt like any blessing.  
Whisper it like it's a secret  
Uttered to condemn the one who hears it with a heavy heart.)**_

White.

He can see nothing but white.

He has gone blind (he is sure), and the silence nearly convinces him that he is also deaf except for the faint beeping of a machine in the background. For the span of four breaths, he has no idea why he is in the hospital-and then he does, he knows, he _remembers,_ and momentary confusion is replaced by the twist of a knife in his gut. _Sasuke..._

"Aaaaaa(ahhhh)hhhhhhhhh!" It is the cry of a wounded animal, a death knell, and all who hear it wish they could end the poor creature's suffering.

The hospital bed creaks as Naruto tries in vain to free his bound arms and legs, touch his chakra, anything that will get him somehow closer to Sasuke-anything that will bring him back. He _has to_ bring back Sasuke. It's the one thing he knows; it's the only thing he knows. (and really, what is death compared to orochimaru?_)_

The screaming ends when Naruto's throat is too hoarse to produce words and his body shivers with weakness and strain.

Inside his head, it never ends.

Outside the door and its four chakra-activated locks, the mumbles and whispers of onlookers fill the corridor. They gather in small clusters of subtle glances and forced attempts at small talk about anything other than the boy in the bed.

Sakura takes a break from her other duties to wander over and check on her former teammate. She falls into place beside Kakashi, who has not once left his post since Naruto was admitted, and both watch Naruto's chest rise and fall as he sleeps peacefully (it's a lie). Sometimes, he seems to be mumbling to himself, but it's too quiet to carry beyond the reinforced glass of the window. If he does speak, neither Kakashi nor Sakura betray what they read on his trembling lips. (Sakura involuntarily grasps her chest above her heart; Kakashi simply remains still, watching, waiting, a scarecrow in guarding his field.)

Over time, the crowd outside dwindles to a handful of faithful friends, and then, only those few who can't bear to let Naruto suffer alone.

His teammates rarely leave his side, including Sai, who is starting to rethink awakening his own suppressed emotions. (is starting to believe that it isn't worth the pain, not really)

Shikamaru comes as often as he can manage, keenly aware that had they succeeded in retrieving Sasuke the first time, it never would have come to this. When he's seen enough, he goes outside to have a cigarette and not think about his failures. (he fails at this, too.)

(Iruka never visits Naruto, never comes to watch him fading away, but no one can blame him. Not really.)

Inside the room, only the beeping remains.

_'Sasuke...' _

Lips move, but no sound comes out. Heart beats, but feels nothing. Eyes flutter, unseeing.

Tsunade pulls the blanket up to Naruto's chin. She represses a sigh when he mouths that word again, the word she has grown to hate above all others. If Uchiha Sasuke were alive, she would take great pleasure in killing him all over again.

Naruto's back arches off of the bed, lips parted in a silent scream, and she looks away. It doesn't drown out his shallow, gasping breaths or the rustle of sheets. And nothing can make her forget that the room is altogether too silent to belong to the same loud-mouthed _gaki_ she has grown to love, and eventually, respect.

For a single, selfish moment, she wishes she had never laid eyes on Minato or his foolish offspring, but it passes as quickly as ever to be replaced with the same regret as eighteen years before: _There must have been something I could have done to prevent it. _

She brushes a blond lock from his eyes. Tsunade knows better; they all do. Naruto and Sasuke...they were always hurtling toward this end, toward each other, and there was nothing any of them could have done to stop it. This was inevitable, and—

She catches herself (not for the first time) talking as if the blond boy before her is already dead.

Perhaps it would be better if he was.

As if on cue, Naruto's back arches again and the blanket slips to the floor. His fingers dig into the sheet beneath them, desperate to grasp the one thing he swore to never let go.

She'll prescribe another sedative (she's running out of options).

That inaudible word breaks silently across trembling lips.

_'Sasuke!'_

_**(I'm so heavy in your arms.)**_

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A/N: **I hope that you enjoyed this story. I enjoyed writing it, and I loved reading all of your comments and reviews as I posted it. Thank you very much. If you haven't yet, please let me know what you think, even if you don't understand everything. I have no problem explaining or hearing your theories about how/why this happened. I'm considering a prequel chapter, but I don't expect to write it. It's just an idea in the back of my head inspired by one of your comments. Again, thank you so much. I'm very happy that you read my story!**  
**_


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